AN ELIZABETHAN CORNERSTONE, A MAJOR SOURCE FOR SHAKESPEARE: HOLINSHED’S CHRONICLES, 1587, WITH THE RARE ADDITIONAL 18TH-CENTURY FACSIMILES OF THE UNCENSORED SHEETS BOUND IN

HOLINSHED, Raphael. The First and Second [and Third] volumes of Chronicles… Now newly augmented and continued to the year 1586… (London: At the expenses of John Harrison, et al., 1587). Three volumes bound in two, as often. Folio (11 by 15-1/2 inches), 19th-century full brown paneled calf rebacked with original spines laid down, gilt- and blind-tooled boards, spines and dentelles, raised bands, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt.

Greatly revised and expanded 1587 second edition of the greatest Elizabethan repository of English history, an important source (this edition) for Shakespeare’s plays, with woodcut initials and title pages. All cancellations have been made in this copy (as in most copies), but bound in appropriately are the scarce 18th-century facsimiles of the sheets that were censored.

An immediate success upon publication, Holinshed’s Chronicles “form a very valuable repertory of historical information. The enormous number of authorities cited attests Holinshed’s and his successors’ industry. The style is clear, although never elevated, and the chronicler fully justified his claim ‘to have had an especial eye unto the truth of things” (DNB). As the foremost British history available at the time, the Chronicles did more to shape Elizabethan literature than any English historical work. “The Elizabethan dramatists drew many of their plots from Holinshed’s pages,” and this second edition is demonstrably the edition employed by Shakespeare as the principal source of his “history” plays. “Both W. G. Boswell-Stone and H. R. D. Anders have shown that it was this second edition which Shakespeare employed as the source, sole or part, of ten of his plays” (Pforzheimer 494 note). “Nearly all of the historical plays, as well as Macbeth, King Lear, and part of Cymbeline, are based on Holinshed” (DNB). In fact, Shakespeare drew not only his plots from Holinshed, but occasionally his phrases. The complete story of the rise and fall of Macbeth can be found in the Scottish history (Part III, pp. 170-76), and the Chronicles’ eloquent descriptions intimate at times the very wording of Shakespeare’s drama: Macbeth is described as “a valiant gentleman, and one that if he had not beene somewhat cruell of nature, might have beene thought most worthie the governement of a realme”; the three “weird sisters… women in straunge and wild apparell, resembling creatures of elder world” deliver to Macbeth and Banquo the fateful prophecies; and, in the final battle, Macduffe reveals that “I am even he that thy wizzards have told thee of, who was never borne out of my mother, but ripped out of her wombe” (Whitaker, Shakespeare’s Use of Learning).

When this expanded second edition of the Chronicles appeared in January 1587, the Privy Council, responding to Queen Elizabeth’s displeasure at certain passages, ordered the Archbishop of Canterbury to recall and censure the work; as a result extensive cancellations (74 pages) were made of offending sections in Volumes II and III. The censors removed “all references to English intervention in Scottish politics, raised the profile of the Earl of Leicester, and distanced England from Elizabeth’s one time suitor, the Duc d’Alençon. Any accounts of trials and executions were altered to ensure proceedings were unequivocally portrayed as being fair and legal” (King’s College London). By all accounts, however, the work of altering the entire edition of the Chronicles was rather haphazardly carried out, so that the sections affected vary from copy to copy. Nevertheless, in this copy all of the offending sections are cancelled or excised. Between 1723 and 1728, however, type facsimiles of the excisions themselves were published from the original uncensored text of Volumes II and III. In this copy, all cancellations have been supplied with these careful 18th-century type facsimiles, except for one brief passage, 433-36 in Volume II (Scotland), where the leaf paginated 438/31 is an early cancel, and the leaf paginated 434-35 is not present. Pages 1419-1574 in Volume III (England) has been entirely supplied in facsimile, although only two sections (pp. 1419-1538 and 1551-74) were actually suppressed. Facsimile pages 443-50 in Volume II bound in slightly out of order, but present. Text in black-letter. STC 13569. Lowndes, 1086. Grolier One Hundred 6. See Pforzheimer 494; Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare III, 13-15. Bookplates. Faded ink marginalia, indicating text may have been professionally cleaned.

Title page of Volume III trimmed and mounted with no loss to image or text. Interiors generally clean with good margins; foxing to title and early leaves of Volume I. Marginal paper repairs to last three leaves of Volume III. An extremely good copy, splendidly bound, scarce and most desirable.